Organizers said more than 500 people crowded a main hall of the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center at Macalester. The St. Paul stop was the last of three the wife of Vice President Joe Biden made in Minnesota on Friday.

Her husband and Obama know the importance of education and the challenges students face, she told the crowd, most of them students. She and her husband, as well as the Obamas, relied on financial aid to put themselves through school.

“We are where we are today because of the opportunities we had in education,” said Biden, an educator who teaches English at a Virginia community college.

She assured the students gathered that the Democratic Obama administration continues to work for students, noting efforts to double funding for Pell Grants and implementing a program that makes it easier for people to pay back their student loans.

“We’re all in this together, and everyone deserves a fair shot,” Biden said to loud cheers.

Biden encouraged students to get involved in the election and to vote in November.

Obama and her husband, according to a poll released earlier this week, have a seven-percentage-point lead (51 percent to 44 percent) in Minnesota over Republican challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Before the St. Paul stop, Biden spoke Friday at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park and at a Women for Obama gathering in Hopkins.

The Midwest campaigning continues this weekend for Biden, who will speak in three Michigan cities Saturday.

Biden was joined Friday by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for re-election against Republican challenger Kurt Bills.

Bill Salisbury has been a newspaper reporter since 1971. He started covering the Minnesota Capitol for the Rochester Post-Bulletin in 1975, joined the Pioneer Press as a general assignment reporter in 1977 and was assigned to the Capitol bureau in 1978. He was the paper's Washington correspondent from 1994 through 1999, when he returned to the Capitol bureau. Although he retired in January 2015, he continues to work at the Capitol part time.

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